Have pasta, will travel: The volunteers cooking lasagna for strangers

2 hours ago 1

When Andrea Ruff was in hospital, worried and focused on her premature baby, a friend dropped off a basket full of snacks, to give her a break from hospital food.

It was a small but loving gesture, a welcome surprise. “It was nice that someone was thinking of me,” she said.

Andrea Ruff, with son Joshua, makes lasagna for people who need a free meal.

Five years later, Ruff is paying that kindness forward as she cooks lasagna for strangers in need.

Ruff, from Gisborne, north-west of Melbourne, volunteers for Lasagna Love, a not-for-profit organisation giving free serves of the classic Italian comfort food to people going through tough times.

Last Sunday, Ruff made five trays of lasagna at home and drove 90 kilometres to Ballarat to deliver them to five different households.

Ruff mostly works from home, for the state archives, and given she has a small child (Joshua, 5, the aforementioned premature baby), likes that this volunteering role is flexible.

She can choose how often she accepts assignments, and how far she will travel.

Joshua watches his mum cook, carries bags during deliveries, and is learning to help others.

The deliveries won’t solve recipients’ troubles but can alleviate stress, a little. “It gives them a break, and something to look forward to,” Ruff says.

When someone delivered a home-cooked meal after Joshua’s birth, Andrea Ruff says she was moved by the gesture.

Ruff’s first delivery was to a single mother in Melton. “She had two kids, including a two-month-old baby, and she was finding it hard,” Ruff said.

“She was super grateful for the lasagna, and I was happy I could help her.”

Lasagna Love was founded in 2020 by a young mother, Rhiannon Menn, to help locals during the COVID-19 pandemic in San Diego, California.

It now operates in the US, UK, Canada and Australia.

Lasagna Love’s volunteer Australian and UK co-ordinator, Michelle Pavey, said requests for lasagna were currently submitted to an international website, lasagnalove.org but there will soon be an Australian site.

Pavey said in Lasagna Love’s five years running in Australia, 880 volunteers have made 3467 deliveries, feeding almost 13,000 people. Some clients are domestic violence survivors living in hotels. Some are frail elderly people.

Pavey, from Brisbane, has done 42 deliveries in two years. Her first client was a single mum with breast cancer, going through chemotherapy, who had three teenage sons.

Pavey, a breast cancer survivor, empathised “with someone being that ill and still having to feed your family”.

Pavey says Lasagna Love is relatively easy to volunteer for.

“You sign up on the website and every month or fortnight, you get an email saying you’ve got a match.

“You’re given the number of adults and kids to be fed, and any dietary requirements.”

Each recipient is allowed one delivery per 28 days, and volunteers provide at least one serve per person.

Pavey says: “I normally do a big tray with eight or 10 serves in it, and if there are leftovers, they can freeze them to have the next day, or whenever.

“If you’re going to cook lasagna, you may as well cook a big tray of it, I think.”

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